


As Food to Life

by CloudAtlas



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5 Times, Bisexual Male Character, Canon Character of Color, Dick Jokes, Fluff, Food, Gay Male Character, Grief/Mourning, Interracial Relationship, M/M, POV Sam Wilson, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Relationship Negotiation, Travel, Up all night to get Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-03 09:11:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4095271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/pseuds/CloudAtlas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or: Five meals Sam Wilson shares with Steve Rogers<br/> </p><p> </p><p>  <i>Steve wakes up again a couple of hours later, complaining about how hungry he is. His IV bag is empty but clearly it was doing very little in the face of the Serum. Sam smiles at him and grabs a nurse, requesting as much food as she can feasibly get. Sam’s fed Steve breakfast; he knows how much that man can put away</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	As Food to Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monanotlisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monanotlisa/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Halver Hahn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3957436) by [monanotlisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monanotlisa/pseuds/monanotlisa). 



> Thank you to ink for beta. Title from Shakespeare's Sonnet 75: So Are You To My Thoughts As Food To Life.

**Washington DC, USA**

Steve’s woken up once already – was cognizant and knew where he was and everything – but regardless Sam doesn’t really want to leave him alone. The world’s fallen down around his ears again and no one should be alone after that, super soldier serum or not.

So Sam stays in the uncomfortable plastic hospital chair, playing Marvin Gaye on repeat and only getting up to go to the bathroom and to have not-so-whispered conversations with his sister and Keiko, Riley’s widow. (“I saw those wings on the TV and just knew you were doing some damn fool thing. Worrying me sick! I swear, Wilson, if you’d died I’d’ve come down to DC to kill you myself. I’m not losing another of my boys to the sky.”) A nurse leaves him a message from no-longer-Agent Hill and Natasha pops in, her hair in loose curls, looking softer than he’s even seen her. She smiles at him, a small, brittle thing, and says, “Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

“Where are you going?” Sam asks, because it’s an easier question than _what could I possibly achieve against Steve Rogers on a mission?_

“Digging up some info for Rogers. And then New York, for a couple of days.”

Something in the way Natasha says ‘New York’ screams _don’t ask_ so Sam bites down his question of _who’s in New York?_ – because it’s clearly a _who_ and not a _what_ – and just nods instead.

“I’ll see you around,” Natasha says, in a practiced sort of way that means _I’ll find you, don’t look for me_ , and Sam looks over to Steve in his hospital bed as the door clicks shut. _Yeah, probably_ , he thinks.

Steve wakes up again a couple of hours later, complaining about how hungry he is. His IV bag is empty but clearly it’s doing very little in the face of the serum. Sam smiles at him and grabs a nurse, requesting as much food as she can feasibly get. Sam’s fed Steve breakfast; he knows how much that man can put away.

“How are you feeling?” Sam asks when he’s sat back down in what he’s already thinking of as his chair.

“Like I’ve been beaten almost to death by my brainwashed childhood friend,” Steve says and OK, yeah, that was a dumb question.

Sam doesn’t say anything to that because, sure, he has training in how to help returning vets deal with their PTSD, but this is way out of his zone of expertise.

“Sorry,” Steve mumbles after a moment. “I didn’t mean to be short with you.”

“‘S’alright,” Sam says, shrugging. “Was a dumb question. Though, to be fair, you’re doing much better than most guys I’ve seen who have been beaten, drowned, and shot three times.”

Sometimes Sam can joke about dying. He thinks it’d be worse if Riley had been shot rather than blown out of the sky.

It’s still pretty bad though.

“Yeah, well,” Steve says with that little smile he has, “guess I’m just lucky.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, rolling his eyes, “that must be it.”

The nurse chooses that moment to enter the room with possibly the most food Sam has ever seen in a hospital setting. Granted, it’s still probably going to be terrible, but there are at least ten Jell-O cups, and you say what you like, but Sam loves those shitty Jell-O cups.

“I was informed,” the nurse – Meera, according to her nametag – says, putting down the laden tray with a smile, “that you have quite an appetite. This is all I could get you for now, but I have been informed that you’re likely to be discharged later today, so you can grab burgers then.”

Either she doesn’t know that Steve was admitted with severe physical trauma and three gunshot wounds only two days ago, or she’s been adequately informed of Steve’s special circumstances. Whichever it is, her smile is genuine as she chats pleasantly with Steve, blushing at his complements. She then carries out a few of the basic checks before smiling again and wheeling out the IV stand.

“Man, you have a _gift_ ,” Sam says when Meera leaves.

“What?” Steve says, already halfway through his larger-than-regulation meal.

“You turn your baby blues on women and they just _melt_.”

Steve slides an amused look over to where Sam’s sitting and Sam mentally revises ‘women’ to ‘people’. As if he needs any help in falling for Steve.

“Jealous?” Steve says around a mouthful of food.

“Nah man,” Sam says, totally lying, “I’ve seen you in the morning, ruins the romance.”

It really doesn’t.

“Also,” he adds, “hospital food is nasty without me seeing it half chewed. Didn’t your momma teach you any manners?”

Steve rolls his eyes and flicks a pea at Sam, which bounces off from directly between his eyes because _of course it does._

“Well, obviously _you’re_ better,” Sam snarks. “Hey, if you’re not eating them, can I have your Jell-O cups?”

Steve eyes the bright yellow containers suspiciously. “Is that what they are? I thought they were plastic cups of disappointment.”

There’s a half-eaten one by his now-empty plates. Clearly for Steve hospital Jell-O cups rank well below Army standard MREs.

“You, my friend,” Sam says, snagging three cups at once, “do not understand the joys of E numbers and chemical additives.”

“They taste of yellow,” Steve says flatly.

“They taste,” Sam says, tipping an entire cup directly into his mouth, “of _surviving_.”

Steve stares at him for a moment and Sam wonders if he’s revealed too much. Riley was the one to introduce him to the importance of Jell-O cups and in the hospital after he died, Keiko, four months pregnant with their second child, made sure Sam ate every single one given to him. Because maybe Riley was gone, only to be replaced with a widow and a gaping hole in Sam’s middle, but Sam had _survived_.

Wordlessly, Steve tips the remaining six Jell-O cups into Sam’s lap and watches as Sam eats every single one.

And when Sam stacks up the empty cups on the tray for Meera to remove, he finds that Steve’s half-eaten cup is now empty.

 

**London, UK**

London is different to what Sam was expecting. He’d thought the UK was supposed to be grey and miserable and raining all the time, but right now there’s a light breeze that brings welcome relief from the sun beating down on him from what seems like every possible angle.

The file Natasha had brought Steve in the cemetery had made for a great starting point in the ‘find Bucky Barnes’ wild goose chase and the SHIELD Information Dump had provided a great deal more, but Sam and Steve had soon discovered that some of the most extensive files to be found on mid-Twentieth Century Hydra and its Russian Affiliates were held in London – some file sharing thing set up between then-Director Carter and British Intelligence, after she decided that Cold War America may not be the most impartial judge on all things Russian. So they get a couple of appointments with the relevant archives and intelligence offices in London and turn up in the UK two days early because, as Sam frequently points out,  _he_  doesn’t have super serum and needs a break every now and again.

So for two days Sam has the most cultured holiday he’s had in years. Steve, being Steve, takes him to several art galleries and proceeds to be very bemused by contemporary post-war art (not that he’s alone in this; Sam has next to no idea what’s so impressive about a massive crack in the floor either) before announcing that clearly the National Gallery was the way to go. But then Sam gets distracted by the sight of the Houses of Parliament – crazy fantasy architecture that it is – and they end up on Waterloo Bridge instead, taking in the view.

“It’s taller than I remember,” Steve says suddenly.

“The Houses of Parliament?” Sam asks sceptically, casting his eye over the ostentatious Gothic façade that doesn’t look like it’s changed at all in the past couple of hundred years.

“London,” Steve says, looking around. “It’s shinier too.”

He waves his hand around like that’s supposed to make sense.

“Taller,” Sam says flatly, before what Steve means hits him.

Steve was in London during the War.  _The_  War – World War Two. Sam’s mind reels.

Intellectually, Sam knows that Steve was born in the early nineteen hundreds. He knows he grew up in the Roaring Twenties and was a teenager during Prohibition. Steve’s  _Captain America_  for fuck’s sake; Sam knows he fought in World War Two. But Steve is also just a guy. Sam’s seen him running on too little sleep, seen him with bedhead and bleeding into his hands and singing off key to Taylor Swift. So sometimes he forgets that Steve is someone special, someone miraculous.

Forgets that Steve’s been to London before, lifetimes ago.

“Oh,” he says weakly, and  _well done, Wilson. Such witty repartee_.

“To be fair though,” Steve continues, oblivious to Sam guppying beside him, “I was mostly in either the barracks outside the city or in Soho. Maybe it was like this in other places.”

He doesn’t sound convinced as he looks over at the various glass-and-chrome buildings visible in amongst the older Victorian architecture though. They’re not so different to buildings you can find in New York or DC, but Sam doesn’t think it’s so weird that, in Steve’s head, this place never changed.

“Wait,” Sam suddenly says. “Soho? Isn’t that the bit that’s full of sex shops? Or the gay area or something?”

His heart shouldn’t jump at the thought, it really shouldn’t.

Steve frowns, as if he’s running through options in his head.

“You know,” he says slowly, “that explains a lot.”

Sam laughs, slightly giddy and a lot disbelieving. “Only you, man. Only you. C’mon, let’s get food.”

Steve stops some passers-by, two artsy looking girls holding hands, asking for a good place to eat and, after a few disagreements and some friendly bickering, the girls direct them to a market two bridges over.

“Great falafel,” one of them says.

“Or,” the other chimes in, “some good pubs with  _proper_  pub grub.”

They smile wide and blush when Steve thanks them – seriously,  _mad_  skills – before wandering off chatting excitedly, each waving their free hand as they talk.

So Sam and Steve set off along the river, passing expensive restaurants, the National Theatre, and  _Shakespeare's Globe,_  which Sam makes Steve stop for because, yeah, he may not be super into theatre or anything, but he  _learnt about this guy at school_. It's sort of mad, the amount of history this one tiny island has.

“Man, I can’t get over this," Sam says, weirdly in awe of this building he's never really thought about before. “This place is older than my fucking  _country_.”

“It’s a reconstruction,” Steve points out.

Sam rolls his eyes. “That’s really not the point.”

Steve smiles at him and Sam feels his stomach flip. It’s probably a terrible idea, spending all this time with  _Captain fucking America_ , but Sam’s still the person who signed up to an experimental Air Force programme because his partner said  _hey, it’ll be fun_ , so Sam isn’t the smartest person going.

Riley’s probably laughing at him from his seat in the sky. Fucker.

“C’mon,” Steve says after a moment. “Falafel or ‘pub grub’?”

Sam shrugs. “I feel like we can get falafel back home, but the market sounds fun so…”

“We’ll look around it after the pub then,” Steve says, leading Sam through tiny cobbled streets and, because they get a little lost, through the grounds of Southwark Cathedral before hitting the main road and a place called the George Inn – which is also almost as old as the States.

"So," Sam says as they're shown to their table amongst old wood panelling, "do you remember anything interesting food-wise from your last visit?"

Steve thinks. "British ale. Second time ‘round." Sam assumes he means post-serum. "Was good. Couldn't get drunk though, much as I wanted to right then. It's warm though, which is weird."

"Warm beer?" Sam says sceptically. "That's not right."

"Hey," comes the cheerful voice of their waitress as she comes over to take their order, "don't knock it ‘till you try it. What can I get you?"

Steve opens his mouth to say something but Sam beats him to the punch. "I want the most British thing you have. What would that be?"

The waitress grins. "Fish and chips, scampi and chips, bangers and mash, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, steak and kidney pie, or toad-in-the-hole. Though we're out of both scampi and chips, and steak and kidney pie."

"Bangers and mash?" Sam says dubiously, as Steve says "Toad-in-the-hole?" in much the same tone. "Sounds kinda dirty."

The waitress’ grin gets bigger. "Both involve sausages."

Sam snorts out a laugh and Steve says, "Definitely sounds dirty."

"There's a pudding called Spotted Dick," their waitress says shrugging. "Whoever named that just bypassed euphemisms entirely."

Sam gives up at that and starts laughing. “Do you sell that? Can we order all the British dick euphemism foods?”

“Unfortunately not,” the waitress says. “I think it’s one of those things we’re quietly pretending doesn’t exist.”

“So you just tell all the American tourists who wander in off the street?”

The waitress smiles impishly. “Obviously.”

Sam laughs again and, out of the corner of his eye, he can see Steve smiling.

“OK,” Steve says eventually, when Sam has calmed down some, “one toad-in-the-hole and one bangers and mash. And then two of whatever good local beer you have on tap.”

He smiles wide at the waitress, who blushes slightly. _Seriously_.

“Oh, and,” Sam adds, just as the waitress is turning away, “that one,” Sam points at Steve, “can put it away, so whichever is the biggest portion is his, OK?”

The waitress looks at them for a brief moment, in that way that implies that she’s deciding if this is the right audience. She then gives a surreptitious glance at the closest tables, before leaning in slightly and saying, with a little mischievous smile, “So his is the bigger sausage?”

Sam chokes on nothing and starts _crying_ with laughter, while Steve blushes bright red.

“I’m sorry,” she says, managing to look genuinely apologetic while still grinning at Sam, “but you sort of ran straight into that one.”

That girl, Sam decides, is getting _such a big tip._

No pun intended.

 

**Cologne, Germany**

Sam’s on a stone bench in the square, lying flat with his arm flung over his face, playing up to the stereotype of ‘annoying American tourist’ by taking up way more space that he really should. But Steve’s had him up since around half three this morning and he was jetlagged to start off with, so he feels _entirely justified_. Steve Rogers is terrible for his health and wellbeing.

“I see you’re admiring the view,” Steve says, dropping something on his stomach and causing Sam to grunt.

Sam removes his arm from his face to glare at Steve, but gets stuck halfway through the motion because Steve is backlit and the sun makes his hair glow. So instead they just stare at each other for a brief moment.

“Yeah,” Sam manages eventually, “something like that.”

He can’t quite see because of the sun, but he’s sure Steve blushes.

“What have you got me?” Sam says as he sits up, in an effort to break the weird tension that’s built up. Recently it’s been happening more and more, to the point that Sam is almost entirely convinced it’s not, in fact, a product of wishful thinking.

“Half a chicken,” Steve replies, moving to side beside him.

“Sweet.”

Sam digs into the bag and comes up with what definitely isn’t half a chicken.

“Uh, Steve? Either you need your eyes checking or the cute girl lied to you, ‘cause this ain’t half a chicken.”

Steve grins wide, like he’s just pulled the best joke ever.

“Nope. _Here_ that’s half a chicken.”

Sam looks down at the cheese sandwiches and then back up at Steve.

“Strange people, the Germans,” he says mildly, before digging into his very-much-not-chicken-at-all sandwich. It’s pretty good really.

Steve hums noncommittally around a mouthful of bread. He’s bought three sandwiches and they’re pretty big, but Steve’ll still manage to put away two of them without much trouble.

Sam smiles.  He can feel the heat of Steve’s skin he’s sat so close, which is another thing that’s been happening recently – sitting close enough to almost touch. Sam doesn’t want to assume anything, because it’s not like he’s sat down with Steve and had a chat about where his preferences lie but, regardless of the fact that Steve was basically dating a firecracker of a British woman during the War, they _are_ chasing his best friend over several continents despite the fact that said best friend tried to kill Steve last time they met. It’s not the best indication, but it’s the best he’s got. It gives him hope anyhow.

Sam gazes out towards the soaring towers of St Gereon’s Basilica, imposing even in the bright sunshine. He wonders at the belief required to build a building like that. He knows there are churches that took over a hundred years to complete, and sometimes he just marvels at people’s willingness to invest in something they may never see finished.

“Hey,” Steve says quietly from beside him and Sam turns, thinking _yeah, maybe I understand it better than I think._

“Yeah?”

Steve has his mouth open to say something, but he balks and looks away before turning back with a stubbornly determined expression on his face.

“You can punch me if I’ve got this wrong,” he says instead of whatever he was planning, and Sam only gets as far as opening his mouth to say _haven’t punched you so far and we’re already a continent away from where we started_ before Steve swoops in to press their lips together.

Sam has amazing reflexes. It’s how he got through all the EXO-7 Falcon trials – back when it was still a code name and not a Code Name. You gotta be quick to fly those things.

All those hard won skills desert him now and Steve pulls back before Sam can metaphorically pick his jaw off the floor.

“Wuh?” he says intelligently.

“Sorry,” mumbles Steve. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll… I hope that doesn’t – yeah. I just, really like you, in – ”

“Shut up a minute,” Sam butts in, mind working overtime as he stares into the middle distance in disbelief. He’s silent for a moment.

“Nope,” he says abruptly, “I’m reviewing the bit where Steve Rogers kissed me and I was too fucking slow on the uptake to kiss him back and still coming up with disappointing results.”

There’s a childish, giddy feeling in his chest and he’s utterly incapable of stopping the manic grin that steals over his face.

“C’mere,” he says, turning back to face Steve’s blush and tentative eyes. “We gotta try that again. You didn’t get the Sam Wilson Experience.”

Steve’s resulting grin is almost as wide as Sam’s own.

“Does it deserve the capital letters I can hear?” Steve says, aiming for his usual mischievous tone but just sounding breathless.

“I dunno,” Sam says softly as he cups Steve’s face in both of his hands. “I guess you just gotta find out.”

 

**Pisky, Ukraine**

It must be past three in the morning, but Sam can’t sleep.

They’re in Ukraine now and too close to Chernobyl for it to feel anything other than desolate and depressing. And that’s before you factor in the part where they’ve located a defunct Hydra facility located close to the abandoned city, somewhere they are almost certain Barnes was kept in the late eighties and early nineties. The idea of him being kept near that radioactive ghost town is horrifying enough without adding in what was _done_ to him while he was kept there, but that’s not why Sam can’t sleep.

He sighs and gets up, admitting that sleep is probably not going to happen tonight.

He makes his way into the little kitchen of the house they’ve rented in Pisky, a tiny place close enough to Chernobyl to be convenient, but far enough away to have missed the worst of the radiation. The table is covered in files and declassified documents, and Sam stares at them blankly for a moment before dropping heavily into a chair.

The time difference between Ukraine and the US is probably enough for him to be able to ring his sister, or even Keiko, but he’s not really sure what he could tell them and locating his phone right now seems like too much of an effort.

And right now he doesn’t want to see Steve.

This wild goose chase is taking its toll on Sam. Not so much in body – he was in the Air Force after all, he knows how to push through exhausting situations – but in soul. It’s just –

Well, he’s chasing someone else’s thought-dead best friend across the world; s _omeone else’s_. And he wouldn’t wish what happened to Barnes on his very worst enemy but why does Barnes get a second chance at life? Why does Steve? Why them and not Riley, the best person _Sam’s_ ever known?

Sometimes Sam misses Riley so much it’s like a physical weight on his chest, making it hard to get up in the morning. And Riley will always be six feet under in his family plot in Ashland, Ohio and not _here_ , running around Ukraine being the hero Sam remembers.

Sam doesn’t want to blame Steve, to resent him, because there’s no blame; it just is what it is. But Steve got a new body and a pretty girl and even when he ‘died’ he got another go around seventy years later where he found that his friend, for all the terrible things done to him, had _also_ got the chance, however slim, to give the world a second go around.

And that’s simplistic and unfair, because Steve saw World War Two and watched his friend die with no knowledge that he’d get a second go, or how his second go would manifest itself in the worst way possible. Steve never got to marry his pretty girl and instead now gets to visit her in an old people’s home where on bad days she doesn’t know who he is. But –

Sam just really misses Riley tonight, here in the shadow of a ghost town and seventy years of torture and brainwashing.

“Sam?” comes Steve’s quiet voice from the doorway of the other bedroom, the _you alright?_ evident in the tone of his voice. His hand comes down to weigh, heavy and somewhat grounding, on Sam’s shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Not really,” Sam mumbles into his folded arms.

Steve’s hand rubs backward and forwards on Sam’s back, warm through the thin material of his t-shirt. They don’t share beds – partially because most rentable rooms don’t seem to cater for two grown men sharing a bed, but mostly because neither Sam nor Steve feel ready for that – but sometimes Sam wishes they did. His earlier reluctance to see Steve has now been tempered by his warm hands and Sam’s need just to be _held_.

Steve doesn’t say anything, and they’re silent for a good long while before Sam breaks it with an abrupt, “How come _your_ best friend gets a second chance and mine doesn’t?”

And Sam is suddenly very glad that it’s dark enough to hide any blush his face might be showing, because that was dumb and unfair and _Wilson shut up, it’s not Steve’s fault_.

Steve’s hand grips his shoulder _tight_ and Sam feels him breathe out deliberately even before sliding his arms around Sam and pushing his nose in behind Sam’s ear. Steve’s now kneeling awkwardly on the floor by Sam’s chair, but he feels solid and _real_ and Sam doesn’t want him to move.

“I’m sorry,” Steve breathes into Sam’s neck before Sam can say the exact same thing. “I didn’t think… Sorry.”

Steve kisses Sam’s jaw.

“I just – ” Sam chokes out. “I miss him.”

“I get it.”

“He was – he was my _best friend_ – ”

“I _know_.”

“ – and now he’s _gone_.”

And Sam’s crying, because Akiko has her father’s smile and little Ai never met her daddy.

Very gently, Steve pulls Sam off his chair and into his lap, and they sit on the floor until Sam calms down.

“Hey,” Steve says eventually, warm hands on Sam’s neck, “I’m sorry for what happened to Riley. And I’m sorry for dragging you around the world looking for Bucky when it seems incredibly unfair in light of your own loss. If you want to go home, to visit Keiko or Viola or something, you should. I don’t mind.”

He kisses Sam on the temple.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says quietly.

Sam snorts. “You wouldn’t last two days without me,” he says, his voice rough. “You need someone to stop you from making stupid ass decisions, and Natasha's not around to keep you in line.”

Steve laughs quietly and hugs Sam tighter. “Maybe you’re right, but I’d rather you were OK.”

“I’d maybe be alright after some food,” Sam says, elbowing Steve gently in the ribs. The bleak feeling is fading a little now and distantly Sam feels embarrassed for crying all over Steve, but he pushes that feeling down. One thing he’s learnt from leading classes at the VA is that there is nothing wrong with feeling vulnerable and nothing wrong with crying. It’s hard in practice, but he’s not got this far to give in to something as inconsequential as stereotypes of masculinity.

“I think I can manage that,” Steve says softly. “Though we’ve only got rye bread and that kvass stuff because _someone_ wouldn’t go shopping yesterday.”

“Shut up you,” Sam grumps half-heartedly and Steve laughs before extracting himself from Sam’s limbs and reaching down to pull him up from the floor.

They clear the table of files and eat rye bread and drink kvass while watching the sun rise through dirty windows. Sam leans on Steve’s shoulder, taking comfort in his solidity and quiet understanding, while Steve slumps half over the table, as if keeping himself upright is too much like hard work right now. Sam knows the feeling.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam gazes at Steve’s profile in the weak light of the kitchen. Maybe it _is_ unfair that Riley will never get his second chance, much as Sam feels he should. But then again, almost everyone who knows someone who died young feels they deserve a second chance, and just because Riley wasn’t the one to get it this time doesn’t mean Sam can or should grump and wallow about it. For one, Riley would kick his ass if he could, as would Keiko for that matter.

And for another, it’s an insult to those who didn’t survive to not try and save those who, against all odds, did.

**New York, USA**

It’s been weeks now, months even, and the scant trail they’d been following has all but dried up; maybe Hydra taught Barnes too well, maybe Barnes knew how to disappear beforehand and he's decided to take this chance to start over. Maybe he's dead. Whatever the reason, Steve and Sam have tramped around what feels like all of Europe and most of the East Coast and can’t find hide nor hair of him and Steve is as low as Sam has ever seen him.

They’re in Brooklyn now, half for Steve – the familiarity of old neighbourhoods, however changed, giving some comfort – and half in the futile hope that Barnes may have sought this place out for much the same reason.

Sam doesn’t think it likely but, then again, what does he know about brainwashing?

They’d started off by trying to find Steve’s old apartment block – but the tenement he grew up in as a child was gone, replaced instead with smart looking red brick apartments with iron fire escapes painted bright colours – so now they’re walking aimlessly. Occasionally Steve sees something familiar – a corner shop that used to be a barber’s, a restaurant that was once the local grocery store – and he tells Sam about Penny O’Leary or Jack and Shirley MacGregor or some other people from his childhood, but mostly they walk in silence.

“What if we don’t ever find him?” Steve says abruptly, as they walk through one of Brooklyn’s little parks.

Sam doesn’t respond immediately.

There are a lot of things he could say to that: measured assurances, therapist-tinged sentences about loss and acceptance, blind-faith statements that seem less and less likely to be true. In the end he settles for a gentle, “Then we don't find him.”

He stops Steve with a hand on his wrist. Steve’s expression is broken open, lost, and Sam can’t think what is worse; Sam’s cold knowledge that Riley’s dead and buried and never to return, or Steve’s knowledge that Barnes is  _somewhere_ , alive and hurting, but maybe never to be found.

“There was always that chance, Steve,” he says softly. “And if that's what happens, it’ll hurt. And you’ll grieve all over again, and it’ll be worse for all that. But you’ll have me, and you’ll have Natasha and Maria and Stark and the Avengers, and we’ll help. And you’ll heal.”

Sam kisses him gently on the lips.

“Whatever happens, you’ll be alright, Steve.”

Steve smiles, a small, watery looking thing, and Sam tugs lightly on his arm to get him walking again, through the park and back onto the road.

They walk a couple more blocks in silence before Sam decided Steve has wallowed enough.

“Have I told you I've never been to New York before?” Sam says conversationally, well aware that he’s told Steve this at least once a day since they arrived.

“Yes,” Steve says, smiling slightly, “you have.”

“Well, I ain’t that impressed. They tell you it’s gonna be amazing, but look at this!” Sam gestures at a car on the sidewalk, its rear bumper loose. “Disappointing.”

“Hush you, you’re insulting the greatest city in the US,” Steve says, good humour creeping back into his tone.

“Did we land in Frisco and I didn’t notice?”

Steve raises an eyebrow at Sam. “You’re telling me you think San Francisco is the greatest city in the US?”

“My sister says so, so it’s gotta be true.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Yeah well, I’m here to prove her wrong. Possibly with hot dogs or New York pizza.”

“You don’t need to be in New York to eat New York pizza.”

Steve gives Sam a flat and highly unimpressed look. “Yes you do, Sam.”

In the end they find a little hot dog stand on the corner of... Sam squints up at the chipped green road sign but is none the wiser. Anyway, they buy six, of which Steve eats four. They’re perfect; drenched in ketchup and mustard and with just the right amount of onions, and Sam has to admit that very little tastes better than a proper New York hot dog.

“You’ve got some…” Steve says softly, his hand coming up to wipe what is probably mustard from Sam’s bottom lip.

“You did not just use that move on me,” Sam says delighted, causing Steve to blush. “Is this what flirting with Captain America is always going to be like? Because I thought he was  _smooth_.”

“Oh I’m sure he is smooth,” Steve says, looking down in embarrassment, “but you’re not flirting with him, so…”

Sam’s smile softens, and he catches Steve by the chin, forcing him to meet his eyes.

“Good,” Sam says, kissing him lightly. “Plus, awesome as Captain America looks in uniform, I kinda like Steve in sweats.”

Steve wears sweats so low Sam can see the cut of his hips. Sam likes Steve in sweats  _a lot_.

“So hey, can I ask you a question?” Sam says, in an effort to banish the mental picture of Steve in sweats from his head. It works, sort of.

“Yeah, sure,” Steve replies as they start walking again, “though if it’s about ice cream I am way ahead of you. There’s a stand just down there, and I want blackcurrent and liquorice if they have it.”

“What the hell kind of flavour is that?” Sam asks, momentarily side-tracked.

“An amazing one. Natasha introduced me to it.”

“Anything with liquorice in it is the work of the devil,” Sam counters, because liquorice is horrible stuff. His grandma used to force the stuff on him and his sister, and neither of them ever quite recovered.

Steve hums noncommittally and Sam can tell he’s being teased but lets it go anyway.

“No, it wasn’t about ice cream actually,” he says, getting back on track. “I just wanted to ask…” Sam can think of no delicate way of asking this so he just goes for it. “Well, you were in love with Bucky, weren’t you?”

Sam watches as Steve’s shoulders tense and relax under his t-shirt, more at the unexpectedness of the question than discomfort it turns out.

“I – yeah. Yeah I was.”

Sam honestly wasn’t expecting such frank agreement and for a moment he’s at a loss as to how to reply.

“So how did being bisexual in the forties treat you?” he says eventually, because _you’re not going to dump me for him?_ is more insecure than Sam wants to be, and will probably just get him Steve’s patented _you’re being a moron_ look.

Steve scrubs his hand over the back of his neck before shrugging and saying, “Better than being gay would have, I guess. Plus, Bucky’s very straight. He knew, obviously, I’m nothing if not _incredibly subtle_.”

Sam smiles at that. Steve has to work very hard to hide how he feels about people (or in Sam and his case, Sam has to be particularly blind) and Sam can imagine Bucky had him pegged pretty soon.

“But well… I knew nothing was going to happen there, and then came the war and Peggy and – it changes things, falling for someone who falls back.”

Steve has shown Sam the few photos he has of Peggy Carter and Sam thinks they must have fit together amazingly well. There’s a set to her jaw that he’s seen on Steve’s face too.

“Here,” Steve says suddenly. “Ice cream.”

He goes over to the small stall and chats for a while before coming back with strawberry for himself and pistachio for Sam.

“No blackcurrent and liquorice,” he says forlornly. “I think Natasha did it on purpose; making me fall in love with an ice cream flavour I can hardly ever find is just the sort of thing she’d find funny.”

Sam snorts. He doesn’t know Natasha _super_ well, but he can definitely see her laughing at Steve as he grumps about ice cream flavours.

“I’m sorry you and Peggy didn’t get to spend more time together,” Sam says eventually. He means it, even if it hurts a little.

“I’m not,” Steve replies. “Or, I am but… well, by all accounts she married a good man and had a good life with great kids. Sometimes I wish it’d been me but… it wasn’t.”

Steve shrugs, his gaze sliding over to Sam. “Anyway, now I’ve got something good too.”

Sam grins at him and Steve grins back for a moment before his mouth gains a decidedly impish slant.

“I am, of course, talking about the ice cream,” Steve says loftily, “so I dunno what _you’re_ grinning at.”

And just for that Sam steals his ice cream and runs off down the street with it; which works for about a hundred meters before _Sam’s_ ice cream – not even Steve’s, the fucker – flies out of its cone and into the gutter, and Steve has to stop chasing him because he’s laughing too hard.

And Sam grins because Steve is happy again and the sun is out and when they kiss Steve tastes of strawberries.


End file.
